Page 2 of 2 A fatal flaw in Afghan peace process
By M K Bhadrakumar
Beyond all these considerations, from the US perspective, a big gain out of the
Saudi involvement would also be that Iran's efforts to build bridges with the
Afghan resistance would be checkmated.
Afghanistan has always been in the cockpit of great power rivalry. The backdrop
of US-Russia tensions is of great significance. On October 10, NATO defense
ministers are scheduled to gather in Budapest, Hungary, and they are expected
to take stock of the souring NATO-Russia ties. The US is advancing the idea of
a NATO "defense plan" against Russia.
Any such plan invoking the centrality of Article 5 of the NATO charter
regarding collective security for the newly inducted countries of Central
Europe and the Balkans will need to be based
on threat perceptions to the alliance emanating from post-Soviet Russia. In
other words, the US is trying to propel NATO into an adversarial stance with
regard to Russia on lines similar to the Cold War era.
But there is a catch. Unlike the Soviet Union, Russia is not peddling any
pernicious ideology of "expansionism" threatening Western security. On the
contrary, Russia is allowing NATO to transport its supplies for Afghanistan via
its airspace and territory. Despite tensions in the Caucasus, Moscow has not
called off such cooperation, especially involving NATO countries like Germany
and France, which are skeptical about the US strategy of pitting the
trans-Atlantic alliance against Russia. The US dislikes the prospect of Moscow
using its equations with Germany or France within an overall NATO framework as
a trump card in its relations with Washington.
Paradoxically, Washington will be relieved if Russia-NATO cooperation over
Afghanistan altogether ceases. There is simply no other way that NATO can cast
Russia as an adversary. But Russia is not obliging. Russian officials have
recently alleged that Washington has prevailed on Karzai to freeze all
cooperation with the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)
on the vital front of combating drug trafficking. But Russia has failed to
react and instead has began fortifying its own mechanism within the framework
of CSTO (and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization) to counter
drug-trafficking.
The main challenge for NATO is that its dependence on Moscow for logistical
support in the Afghan war cannot be terminated as long as there is uncertainty
about the supply routes via Pakistan. Here the Saudis can be of help. Their
involvement in the Afghan peace process will discourage the Taliban from
seriously disrupting the supply routes through Pakistan.
From the US perspective, the immediate political advantage of the Saudi
involvement will be two-fold: its impact on Pakistani public opinion and,
secondly, in countering expanding Iranian influence within Afghanistan. The
Saudi role will hopefully temper the stridency of "anti-Americanism" in
Pakistan. The US can learn to live with the Pakistani people's
"anti-Americanism" provided it remains at an acceptable level and in the realm
of political rhetoric. This is where the Saudis can be of help, given their
considerable influence on the Islamic parties in Pakistan, especially the
Jammat-i-Islami, which makes political capital out of anti-American rhetoric,
and a range of Pakistani leaders, both civilian and military.
Interestingly, CNN has quoted Saudi sources to the effect that "perceived
Iranian expansionism is one of Saudi Arabia's biggest concerns" in Afghanistan,
which is what motivates them to mediate a peace process involving the Taliban.
It is worth recalling that one of the attractions underlying the US-Saudi
sponsorship of the Taliban in the early and mid-1990s was the movement's
manifestly anti-Shi'ite stance and its infinite potential to be pitted against
Iran on the geopolitical chessboard.
The Taliban had killed nine Iranian diplomats in the northern Afghan city of
Mazar-i-Sharif in August 1998. The Iranian Foreign Ministry said at that time
that "the consequences of the Taliban action is on the shoulders of the Taliban
and their supporters". Then-Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani viewed
the incident as part of "a very deep conspiracy to occupy Iran at its eastern
borders".
Given the ebb and flow of the US-Saudi-Pakistani role in promoting the Taliban
in the 1990s, Tehran and Moscow are bound to sit up and take note of the
current trends. On the face of it, neither Tehran nor Moscow can take exception
to the Saudi role in Afghanistan as that would run against the grain of their
recent years of sustained efforts to foster relations with Saudi Arabia at the
bilateral level. Tehran, in particular, will be keen to maintain the current
semblance of cordiality in its complicated, multi-layered ties with Riyadh and
will be averse to playing into the hands of the US to turn Afghanistan into yet
another turf of Sunni-Shi'ite (Iran-Saudi) antipathy like Lebanon or Iraq.
But Iran and Russia will be deeply concerned about the US strategic designs.
What will perturb the two countries most will be the US's continued plan to
keep the Afghan peace process within a tiny, exclusive, charmed circle of
friends and allies, which betrays Washington's resolve not to let Afghanistan
go out of its tight grip any time in the foreseeable future. Clearly, they
would take note that the US strategy, as it is unfolding, is only to make the
war in Afghanistan "cost-effective" and not to cut and run.
A Pentagon official was recently quoted as suggesting that "[NATO] countries
that have had a reluctance to contribute forces, in particular combat forces,
may be able to take part in this mission through a financial contribution". As
the official put it, there are "those who fight and those who write checks".
The NATO meet in Budapest on Thursday will be discussing these issues of the
alliance's mission in Afghanistan.
Apart from the cost-effective methods that ensure the war doesn't tax the US
financially, the new head of the US Central Command, General David Petraeus,
can also be expected to make the war more "efficient". He followed a somewhat
similar strategy in Iraq with what he labeled a policy of "awakening" Sunni
tribes. The strategy's Afghan variant, which Petraeus will now spearhead in his
new capacity as the head of the Central Command, can be expected to involve
hiring Pashtun mercenaries to fight the war so that Western casualties are
reduced and NATO's continuance in Afghanistan doesn't get imperiled due to
adverse public opinion in the West.
The strategy requires making inroads into the Taliban camp and playing havoc
with its unity. In the US military jargon in Iraq, this was called "non-kinetic
activities", which helped reverse the spiral of violence for the US troops. It
may bring "new hope" to NATO's war in Afghanistan.
Evidently, Washington expects that a clever operator like Prince Turki acting
with the blessing of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques will do a neat job
in regard to splitting the Taliban and separating them from al-Qaeda. (Turki
also served as the Saudi ambassador in Washington.) Turki's brief will contain
an almost near-optimal mix of the godly and the worldly, which is useful for
finessing a movement like the Taliban that crisscrosses religion and politics.
The Saudi involvement is a desperate gamble by the Bush administration in its
dying months. In immediate terms, if Turki makes headway, Taliban violence
against Western troops may diminish, which would give an impression that
Afghanistan is finally coming right for the US.
But it will not remain so for long. Afghanistan is far more fragmented
ethnically than Iraq. The Saudis with all their sovereign wealth funds out of
petrodollars cannot bridge the hopelessly ruptured Afghan divides. At the very
least, much time is needed to heal the deep wounds. Saudi involvement will
almost certainly be resented by several Afghan groups, which viscerally oppose
the Taliban, such as the Hazara Shi'ite groups. As it is, things were poised to
come to a boil in 2009, which is an election year in Afghanistan.
Petraeus beat his war drum and claimed victory in Iraq, but that is not the
final word. Political events are seldom what they seem. The heart of the matter
is that Iran's cooperation made Petraeus' "victory" in Iraq possible. A peace
process predicated on the exclusion of Iran and Russia - leave alone any
"Islamization" of Afghanistan on Wahhabi lines - will not succeed.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign
Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka,
Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
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